Infineon Technologies is supplying the security chips for a government smart card project in South Africa. Through Net1 UEPS Technologies, the government’s South African Social Security Agency is issuing biometric EMV/UEPS debit chip cards for financial transactions of social grants across all of South Africa’s nine provinces.

The project started in April 2012 and Net1 began issuing the first smart cards in June. The card enables more than ten million South African citizens to securely receive their social grants on the issued chip cards with less administrative expenses.

The application is based on Infineon’s SOLID FLASH SLE 77 security controller equipped with asymmetric data encryption. This enables secure storage of data and identification of the cardholder by fingerprints stored on the chip.

The smart card system is based on Net1’s Universal Electronic Payment System, or UEPS, which is a biometric payment technology designed to provide financial services to citizens without access to a bank account.